Well, now that the dust has settled after the season finale of American Horror Story Freak Show, hopefully you can look back and put it into perspective with the rest of the series: Murder House, Asylum, and Coven. You can tell us how you rank it in with all the other seasons, plus we’ve put it some other possibilities (that we’ve heard more than one person say). We would ask you to mainly base your rating on pure entertainment value, but also take into account whether you’d want to re-watch, and… oh hell, just base it on whatever you want. It’s your choice.
We have grimly resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing will ever top Asylum, but we’re still willing to watch. Also, Asylum would be really, really hard to top anyway.
If the many answers start to confuse you (seriously, we started to get confused writing them) just write your own answer (such as: “I liked Asylum best, then Freak Show, then Murder House, then Coven least” or “Freak Show is a tie with Murder House, which I thought was better than Coven but not as amazing as Asylum”); whatever you want.
Before you decide that Freak Show really wasn’t any improvement over Coven, watch the Coven Finale again.
We rank Murder House over Freak Show because Murder House, especially this episode, gave us nightmares and Freak Show did not.
OK, so first, I know the ads that cover up the images are really annoying.We ain’t too thrilled with them either.
The deal with that is, Horror Boom applied over six months ago to be part of this new program (owned by WordPress). Since our site has sidebars, we never had a problem with ads being inserted. We pay extra for some premium WP services like customization, but no extra $ to keep the site ad-free. Since my gig of freelance writing jobs are hard to come by these days (well, ones that actually pay you. Plenty of places would be cool with me writing internet content for free) we’ve been looking for ways to monetize the site without turning into a huge whore with pop-ups everywhere, etc.
So we joined the program, and at first there’d just be some ad at the very end of the post. Then about…pfft… six weeks ago, ads by a service called ‘Luminate’ started covering up the bottom half of images. Since sometimes our pieces and posts are image-heavy, this looks tacky. You can sort of see through them and you can click the X to close them and see a normal view of the image, but that’s a tiny X. Funny co-incidence, about the same time our number of visitors per day got cut down by about 30%, according to our stats! I know from my years of working for Amazon.com that even one extra click can cost you a sale/reader. I’m not calling you guys lazy, but you get the idea. I finally got fed up when the previous post on The Green Inferno had a gallery that took a while for me to assemble, only for each of the dozen or more images to have an ad over it. Sheeeit.
I also, when I applied for the program, agreed not to advertise for ANYTHING else. That’s sort of a problem since I’ve been working on building up an Amazon store, a we’ve officially been Amazon Associates for over a year. We also can’t put up the shops connected to CafePress of Zazzle that feature shirts with horror-themed designs (mostly obscure references that only horror fans will get, a small niche, but we still worked hard in Photoshop constructing them).
So, we’re sorry. We’re looking at other options. Hey, if you have a site/blog yourself and have any suggestions or tips, great.
We’re still working on the FAQ, but in the meantime, we’d love some feedback. This is a site by horror fans for horror fans, and we want you to enjoy your visits to Horror Boom. So, there’s the poll below. If you want to contact us directly with feedback, email us as always via Gmail, user name horrorboom (not case-sensitive). We check for comments regularly too. Actually, more regularly than email.
The poll should take less than a minute. We’ll assume you want to see less invasive ads unless we hear otherwise. What do you want more of?
We left room for more than one answer, plus you can write your own answer. Hell, use the comment section if you want (I didn’t have room for ‘More spoilers’ for instance. Elaborate all you want, and there’s the email address, too.
Thanks for your time, and look for a ‘Scariest Short Horror Film Of The Week’ in a couple of days (of this writing)!
Our friend Patrick Keller wrote this interesting piece last year when speculation was going on about which case The Conjuring sequel might focus on. They’re still trying to decide, but in the meantime, this is very good reading–as is pretty much all of the content at his blog, The Big Seance, if the paranormal interests you. There’s plenty of research invested in the case, plus the piece is packed with links and a 12-minute recording so fucking creepy (real or staged) that I am very, very glad I did not listen to it after dark.
Click “View original” in the lower left, as I can’t get the font color for the first part of the entry lighter and more readable.
One of the many photos of 11-year-old Janet Hodgson supposedly levitating.
There are rumors floating (no pun intended) around the internet that suggest the story line for the sequel of The Conjuring, now a major box office success, will involve the 1977 Enfield Poltergeist in England. This case involves two young sisters, mainly Janet Hodgson, who were really either great at psychokinesis (PK) or were tortured by an unseen spirit, perhaps the spirit of a man named Bill (who reportedly died in the same house years before), who apparently possessed and spoke through one of the girls. The video below includes the famous levitation photos from the case and audio of the creepy and traumatizing supposed voice of Bill during investigations.
I’ve been reading rumors about a sequel for weeks now, and though nothing is official, apparently the film will again involve the characters of Ed and Lorraine Warren…
Couldn’t let this post from Ryan at Rhino’s Horror for a new contest pass without spreading the word! Can a horror short two minutes or less be scary as hell? Well, the short film “Mama” clocks in at two minutes, forty-five seconds (minus the end credits) and still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’ve watched it dozens of times (hey, it’s a work of art) and still find it actively frightening. Horror Boom has posted plenty of Drew Daywalt’s “Fear Factory” shorts such as “Bedfellows” and “Mockingbird” that are LESS than two minutes. So yeah, I have faith that this contest will result in plenty untapped talent applying themselves, and ending up with contest entries that are the stuff of nightmares. Check out the piece for the rules and the deadline (click on “View Original” link at the bottom). What’s extra great is that the piece will actually be included (not just an extra on DVD) in the upcoming horror film Hellions (from Bruce McDonald, director of Pontypool). How cool is that?
As all of you guys know, Bruce McDonald—director of Pontypool—is currently hard at work on his latest horror feature Hellions, which is currently in the editing stage. In their way of giving back to the indie community, the cool cats behind Hellions are hosting an awesome short film contest to help spread the work of indie filmmakers. How cool is that? All you have to do is create the scariest short film up to 2 minutes long, and if they pick you as a winner you’ll have your work not only seen by horror fans from all over, but it will actually be seen in the film itself! Below are all the details!
Thanks to all who took the poll, yo! These are FUN. We purposely put an option for “other”, and it got two votes this time, but alas, those who chose it forgot to add their own answer! Feel free, some of the previous answers are pretty funny (sometimes I also wish the writers could see the ideas) and no-one can see who you are. I’m the official Administrator slash Headmistress Webmistress for AHS and related material, and even if I took pains researching it, the poll will NOT tell me who you are. Keep voting, as we get down to the last 3 episodes, we’ll keep the polls–and maybe a survey–going (there’ll even be a couple of post-finale ones; vote for your favorite bitchy comment, most hated character, scariest character, most shocking moment… you get the idea).
So! American Horror Story Coven will be back on in less than 48 hours* (this’ll be Episode Ten, “The Magical Delights of Stevie Nicks”–guess who guest-stars as herself) and we were all left with some serious “burning questions” we want to see answered after “Head” aired on December 11th. Tell us which one (or two) of them you’ve been waiting for the most over the show’s weeks-long holiday “hiatus” to find out!
*and I have written exactly ZERO of my “Ten Things We Learned” for the missing, what, four or so episodes I’m behind by. Sorry, things got kind of wacky over the holidays. Tree’s down now, things are almost back to normal, I’ll see what I can do… as always, thanks for your patience.
I’d like to tell you some background on this, or how I found it, but the truth is I got lost (it’s not that I don’t understand how to navigate my way around online, but that ADD and an internet connection can add up to plenty of lost time, especially if you want to check out anything horror-related you find that’s new to you) and stumbled on it. Yesterday I go online to get some holiday shopping done today, next thing I’m seeing a link to some creepy kid’s drawings and a heated discussion going on whether they are real or not– a large faction argued that yes, they had to be real, but the little girl who drew them probably had some mental illness (multiple personality disorder was the most popular theory).
Me? I think they’re the product of a creative (and relatively sane) adult who had an idea for a creepy series of drawings to go with a story and wanted it to go viral. Well, I don’t know how long they’ve been floating around (someone mentioned 4chan as the first online source), but I’m glad I stumbled over them. If you haven’t seen them before, here’s the first half of the “Creepy Diary” below. I’d like to give a source, but whenever they pop up, the drawings and diary are never even vaguely credited to anyone, or signed. If I do find out who created them and owns the copyright, I’ll gladly give them credit where credit is due. They’re not part of any viral marketing campaign for a horror movie or any other kind of genre media (which was my immediate thought, but no dice). Maybe the artist/writer wanted to remain anonymous –no matter how tempting it was to put their name on it– for maximum creepiness factor.
Or maybe, just maybe…
Nah. They couldn’t be real.
Could they?
Well, if this is what Lisa looks like, it’s probably best that your parents can’t see her… for their sake.
Oh.
So they just left all the stuff on the porch? Uh-oh…
If you didn’t notice a disturbing theme here before, you have definitely have now. To read the entire “Creepy Diary” entry, click below for….
What’s that, you say? The “Creepy Diary” wasn’t as scary as you were hoping, and you still need your fix of being terrified by something online? I see. Well, then you might want to turn all the lights off, wait till you’re either home alone or the only one awake in the house, and check out this piece featuring a little Korean online comic. Crank up the volume first… I dare you. If that doesn’t scare you, check yourself for a pulse!
PRINCIPAL Let’s all ignore the fact shit just broke all by itself.
CHLOË goes home and some TWERP ON A BIKE harasses her, so she uses TELEKINESIS to knock him off.
TWERP ON A BIKE Let’s all pretend that didn’t just happen, and that anyone who saw the original Carrie isn’t having a severe fucking case of déjà vu.
Wow, this makes us both REALLY happy that we decided to wait for the DVD (A decision based on our gut feelings and Ryan from Rhino Horror.com’s probably spot-on review –-he knows what he’s talking about and seems to have pretty close to the same taste in horror that we do).
The parody is hilarious, the excerpt above doesn’t do it justice. So click below to read…
Yeah, yeah, we notice it too. The color scheme has gone from simple to what is probably a pain in the ass to read, and half the widgets are gone. So, we, what happened was, we saw a new theme and went to do a “live demo” on Word Press (which we’ve done many times before, whimsically and successfully), and hit the wrong button (“Activate”) by mistake. The system too this very seriously and changed the theme. When we changed it back, the color scheme, customization, and pretty much everything except the title and the posts were ALL GONE! We’ve been re-building it for hours, and it’s getting light out, so we’re gonna have to leave the colors like this for now, because that one is the biggest pain in the ass to restore. Oh, and we saw that the “countdown” boxes are completely black, too. Sorry. Thanks for bearing with us while we restore it.
Stay scared, and don’t forget the final 8 episodes of Breaking Bad premiere tonight, August 11th! We know what’s in the cold open, and it’ll freak you the hell out, yo!
Starring Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston
When Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga) agree to help a distraught family claiming their house to be infested with malevolent spirits, they are unaware that the case they are about to undertake will be the most challenging and distressing of their eventful, tumultuous careers as paranormal researchers. Similarly, when I as an audience member originally intending to see low-brow comedy This is the End changed my mind at the last minute and bought a ticket for The Conjuring, I had no idea just how much my heart was going to be very unimpressed; as it was made to work overtime for nearly the entire 112 minutes…
Having helmed the decade-defining Saw (2003), creepy and atmospheric Dead Silence (2007) and the often terrifying thrill-ride Insidious (2010), director James Wan has established himself as Australia’s premier Master…
Unless you’re as obsessed with The Conjuring as we are, we’re guessing there’s going to be at least a few of these that are news to you. Either way, these (and the links we give for more information) make for some interesting– and creepy– reading!
1. Lorraine Warren herself has a very brief cameo in The Conjuring – in one of the classroom scenes. You’ll need to keep an eye out to catch her, though.
3. Remember the ‘Lipstick-Faced Demon’ from James Wan‘s Insidious (2011) who scared the shit out of everybody (especially Barbara Hershey when we first saw him peeking out behind Wilson’s character)?
AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
That actor’s name is Joseph Bishara, and he plays Bathsheba in The Conjuring. Uh-oh.
4. You may have–OK, probably have– noticed via the film’s marketing campaign that there’s a doll in the movie so goddamned creepy that it makes the clown doll in Poltergeist look cuddly. The doll is based on another actual case the Warrens investigated.
Creepy-ass doll created for The Conjuring
5. The aforementioned creepy-ass doll that Wan based this sub-plot on was a Raggedy Anne doll named ‘Annabelle the doll’. James Wan decided rather than use a Raggedy Anne (Quote from Wan: I could not go to the company that makes Raggedy Anne and say, “Hey, can we portray your doll, you know, the product that you make as this thing that is a conduit to demonic spirits?”) he’d carefully design, craft, and build the creepiest doll he could find. Mission fucking accomplished. (See: Dead Silence if you doubt how sleep-with-the-lights-on scary Wan can make dolls and puppets) The Warren Occult Museum displays the original Annabelle doll (in a glass case— for the protection of visitors, not the doll), and you can read about the actual case here… especially if you’re feeling sleepy but need to stay awake.
The real deal.
6. Only one actual prop from the actual Warren’s Occult Museum (the museum was recreated by the production for scenes in the film), was used during filming. Ed Warren was an avid artist and painter, and James Wan says he saw one in the museum that “fit perfectly into our movie version of their haunted museum, and that’s what we have in there”. (Latino-review.com)
8. Andrea Perron (who was about 12 years old when shit got real in their new home)wrote a book about her family’s experience called House of Darkness, House of Light. You can see her reading an excerpt from in below. Also, she has her own You Tube channel.
9. During filming, star Lili Taylor (who also underwent a number of make-up preparations to represent her worsening stages of possession) actually blew her voice out from screaming so loudly and repeatedly… more than once. We assume she (and the sound editors) had a lot of work to get done in ADR. (source: Collider.com article here)
clap clap
10. Cast and crew reported, when asked in interviews, that they experienced strange events during filming, such as scratches appearing on Farmiga’s computer after signing on for the film (see below quote), people inexplicably waking up between 3 and 4 AM (“the devil’s hour’) and the real-life Carolyn Perron falling and breaking her hip while her family was visiting the set. (collider.com, same piece)
“We’d sent her the script back in December and she’s in New York. James [Wan] is in L.A. So she read it immediately. We got the call from her reps, who said she loved it and wanted to get on the phone with James, or Skype the next day. … She went to sleep. She came back in the morning to get on her computer to Skype him and there were three deep scratches on her computer screen. Completely inexplicable. Like, they weren’t there the night before when she read the screenplay on the computer, but they were there in the morning. And there was just no way to explain what it was but stuff like that has happened constantly.” –Producer Peter Safran
If you didn’t notice a disturbing theme here before, you have definitely have now. To read the entire “Creepy Diary” entry, click below for….
HORROR BOOM 